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Ministry of Education, Culture and Science

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has responsibility for general adult secondary education (secondary education for people of 18 years and older), basic skills courses, low literacy programmes and general education programmes for adults in The Netherlands.

Role in the project:

Coordination of the project at national level and final responsibility on project management

Lead the project implementation (field trials and evaluation) in The Netherlands, coordinate the implementation of field trials with local partners

Support, strengthen and facilitate local partnerships to carry out field trials

Support national evaluation team (subcontracted)

Responsibility for the development of adult education policies lies with the department of Vocational and Adult Education, where a team of two policy officers, a legal officer and a financial expert run the ‘adult education programmatic team’. The ‘adult education programmatic team’ maintains good relations with numerous local and regional partners, as well as national non-profit organisations such as the Reading and Writing Foundation, which plays a key role in awareness raising and developing innovative strategies to reach out to low skilled adults. As such, the ministry of education has a coordinating and facilitating role in the field of adult education policies, which are to a large extent decentralised.

The ‘adult education programmatic team’ of the Dutch Ministry of Education is responsible for policy preparation, policy development and implementation and policy evaluation in the field of adult education in the Netherlands. Recently, the team drafted an amendment to the Dutch law for Adult Education, enabling municipalities to offer a greater variety of basic skills courses adjusted to the individual learning needs of the diverse target groups. The amended law has come into force in 2015.